I must now do a blog post about this! Will credit you for stirring my mind up. Thanks.

There were rumors for some years about an Apple PDA also…then around 2003 or 4, Steve Jobs admitted they had been developing such a thing, and he had just killed it. (This was when the PDA market was just starting to dwindle and die. Smart phones took over, and Apple went on to make the iPhone.)

An Apple tablet/slate would be larger than an iPod Touch, with bigger screen, larger storage, probably faster processor and GPU chips, bigger battery. Start with the iPod Touch price, and double or triple it. Now you are starting to see the Apple Tablet selling for around $1000US, and you begin to see the problem. Sure, Apple can make it, but how many will they sell at this price?

I agree that they are probably doing this as part of the iPod family, not the Mac group of computers. And I would say that Apple’s main aim for such a thing would be as a media player, to playback 16×9 iTunes movies. So it would thus need wifi to stream the content, and must handle h.264 codecs, which are brutal on processor chips — so it would probably need hardware decoding built in.

An optical drive kills battery life. Even a hard drive hurts, but NAND flash memory is so costly, the iSlate would probably use a 1.8″ hard drive.

An accelerometer lets it play all the iPhone games and use all those goodies in the app store.

Remember that as far as running full-bore OSX goes, even an iPhone can run OSX, through an app that lets you control your mac. Likewise this iSlate would make a cool remote control for your mac, AppleTV, and even smart house.

As for the transparent screen thing, or even the other non-Apple trick of putting the touch-sensitive surface on the back and showing you where your fingers are ‘through’ the device, these seem like too far in the future for this fall or January MacWorld.

The PA Semi chip that is in development, and is said to be the reason Apple bought that company, it won’t be available in all probability before late 2009, probably 2010. That means it’s much more likely that this iSlate would be using partner Intel’s Atom chips and chipsets, and Atom is in short supply right now. That may be another reason Apple is holding off on this.

Either way, I’m hoping and looking forward to whatever Apple comes out with.

Here’s my take on Apple’s POV in making a tablet:

Design it to be a gadget first, then a platform.

Bluetooth, WiFi, and WiMax radios, but nothing else. Give the cell networks the Floppy Drive treatment and get this century started.*

It should launch just like the iPod and iPhone did… closed.

Give people a year to get used to what the tool itself can do. Don’t even hint that you are even considering letting apps on it. It’s a gadget.**

Resist the urge to “kitchen sink” it. Go the other direction. Cut features until it hurts.

No USB 3.0, no ExpressCard 2.0, only a dock connector.

Build in apps that wouldn’t work in a keyboard/mouse paradigm. Leave the “desktop metaphor” behind.

As for text entry, don’t we have a patent for a two-thumbs-in-the-corners-of-a-large-touch-tablet keyboard design? I swear I saw one about two years ago, long before iPhone was announced.***

As long as it’s responsive and gets OK battery life, it’ll sell.

—- (End of Speculation)

But I don’t have any “inside” info.

– Tedious

*That’s why we call it THE internet. One network, indivisible. Hey Cell Networks! Stop treating SMS and MMS like their bits are heavier or something and cost more to transmit. It’s a digital phone. All it does is send and receive bits. Ditto your radio tower.

**The Developers will piss and moan, but not a peep about an SDK until Macworld. I mean it this time!

***It had two modes. A “qwerty” and a new Apple-specific layout (or maybe it was just one I’d never seen). Anyone know how to search for Apple-specific patents from 2 years ago?

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/17/apple_exploring_dual_sided_translucent_touch_screen_panels.html

In a nutshell, it depicts a transparent, two-sided, touch-sensitive panel that serves as a cover on a laptop-sized device. In the closed position the device would behave like an over-sided iPod Touch, but with the power of a full-sized Mac under the hood. When open, the panel would drop down and have a keyboard image projected into it (either a QWERTY keyboard or a custom keyboard for a specialized application.) Haptic technology in the panel might provide tactile feedback for these virtual keboards.

Is this the “product transition” that’s coming this summer? I’m not placing any bets, but I’ll place a first-day order if it is. (Aside to Mike Cane: if/when Apple announces a product like this, I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts they call it a MacBook Touch, not an iPod Air.)

I’ll say it again: Putting a touchscreen on a Mac is *not* a Product Transition. I’ve laid out my case. You think anyone will give me the freakin credit or even remember, when it happens? No, but they’re all fond of stealing my material!

BTW, typing this at the Apple Store Soho. Ha!

And that SpyMac thing is so obviously freakin fake!!